Elaina James

When I began writing stories in the 80s, I was a classic pantser – I didn’t realise it at the time because I was barely eight years old, and to waffle on for pages and pages about the fairy at the bottom of the garden seemed appropriate. My mum would ooh and aah in all the right places, and my teacher would add a smiley face at the bottom of my page. Little did I know that they were lulling me into a false sense of security. The revelation of being either a pantser or plotter would only become known to me once I hit forty. I wrote blindly, hoping to get to the brutal end of my story with a suitable middle and a punchy beginning, but it never panned out. I would inevitably run out of steam, or my characters would become bored with their adventure. It was in 2013 when I was finally introduced to the joys of plotting. Eager to take part in my first NaNoWriMo contest (National Novel Writing Month – a contest to pen a 50,000 word novel in 30 days), I engaged in the forum discussions...

I just had to use the waxing and waning of the moon as the timeline for my novel, ‘A Jarful of Moondreams’… Last month, I enjoyed reading Jack Steele’s contribution to Elaina's blog. It was on visiting and choosing the right locations for a novel and I thought about how vital the setting of place and time are to any novel. I decided to carry on the theme of setting this month by writing about how I have shown the passage of time in my debut novel, ‘A Jarful of Moondreams’. I write contemporary fiction and my currently released novel is set in the present day, 2015 to be precise. When I was writing, I had a calendar out to track events from May to September but I just knew that my characters would feel happier if I used the waxing and waning of the moon as the timeline for my novel. This could be lots of fun when I got it right but, at times, it was a headache to track the moon calendar of 2015 and make sure that it was in synch with the events in the novel. Why did I d...